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Any civilization that could build a megastructure, probably already built their own JWST hundreds or thousands of years ago, and by now has far more advanced te

Any civilization that could build a megastructure, probably already built their own JWST hundreds or thousands of years ago, and by now has far more advanced technology for detecting other technological civilizations, and probably already knows about us.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Unless they died out before we invented radio and all that exists now are their ancient structures!
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  Yes, they might have all gotten "great filtered" first. Wouldn't it be interesting if all the intelligent species in the galaxy got filtered, except humanity b/c we're relative latecomers to evolution and development. Assume on most or all other habitable planets in the galaxy, the first species to develop was intelligent and capable of technology. But, all hit the Great Filter at the roughly same time and got wiped out. There was no chance for any of them to learn from the mistakes of the others, because they all got wiped out before they were able to detect and observe each other. But on Earth, the dinosaurs came first, and roamed the planet for millions of years while all these other species were developing and then getting great filtered. Then the dinosaurs went extinct, and humanity eventually evolves into a technological civilization, and is able to detect, study, and learn from the ancient ruins of the other civilizations. We get curious about why they went extinct, and then discover evidence of the Great Filter from their ruins, and thus avoid it ourselves.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Extending that a bit... We are among, or perhaps the first of a post filter generation. We do avoid the thing, as do others and eventually arrive at a mode of existence and thought making more possible, friends possible.
jandrese 5y ago
At the very least alien telescopes can detect the change in composition of our atmosphere as a result of industrialization. We could do this using today's technology, so for any civilization with the ability to actually travel between solar systems it is childs play and they would easily have continuous monitoring of all nearby solar systems looking for abrupt changes in the atmosphere.
- pantalaimon 5y ago
  We would still need continuous monitoring of the planets for decades, right? Or can we already make that out in a single snapshot?
  - jandrese 5y ago
    A single snapshot tells a lot (NASA already does this), but continuous monitoring would be almost free at that point so you would have to assume it is happening as well.
unrealhoang 5y ago
How? 10 thousand years ago, I doubt our civilization signature is distinguishable. So unless they have FTL probe, we are still a harmless water/oxigen ball to them.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

Unless they died out before we invented radio and all that exists now are their ancient structures!

SkyMarshal 5y ago
Yes, they might have all gotten "great filtered" first. Wouldn't it be interesting if all the intelligent species in the galaxy got filtered, except humanity b/c we're relative latecomers to evolution and development. Assume on most or all other habitable planets in the galaxy, the first species to develop was intelligent and capable of technology. But, all hit the Great Filter at the roughly same time and got wiped out. There was no chance for any of them to learn from the mistakes of the others, because they all got wiped out before they were able to detect and observe each other. But on Earth, the dinosaurs came first, and roamed the planet for millions of years while all these other species were developing and then getting great filtered. Then the dinosaurs went extinct, and humanity eventually evolves into a technological civilization, and is able to detect, study, and learn from the ancient ruins of the other civilizations. We get curious about why they went extinct, and then discover evidence of the Great Filter from their ruins, and thus avoid it ourselves.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Extending that a bit... We are among, or perhaps the first of a post filter generation. We do avoid the thing, as do others and eventually arrive at a mode of existence and thought making more possible, friends possible.

jandrese 5y ago

At the very least alien telescopes can detect the change in composition of our atmosphere as a result of industrialization. We could do this using today's technology, so for any civilization with the ability to actually travel between solar systems it is childs play and they would easily have continuous monitoring of all nearby solar systems looking for abrupt changes in the atmosphere.

pantalaimon 5y ago
We would still need continuous monitoring of the planets for decades, right? Or can we already make that out in a single snapshot?
- jandrese 5y ago
  A single snapshot tells a lot (NASA already does this), but continuous monitoring would be almost free at that point so you would have to assume it is happening as well.

unrealhoang 5y ago

How? 10 thousand years ago, I doubt our civilization signature is distinguishable. So unless they have FTL probe, we are still a harmless water/oxigen ball to them.